Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
Hello back frens
User ID: 2022
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Oh, Japan has lots of problems
The question is, why do the strengths and problems seem to balance out so much? If you have multiple independent factors, then the total variance sets an upper limit on the effect size of individual factors. So whenever someone says that a factor like housing or regulation or something else that some countries already get right, has a huge potential for economic growth, I look at the small variance between first-world countries, and conclude that either the factor doesnt have that much of an effect, or theres some sort of interaction effect that eats away most of the first-order-effect.
So, I found your claim that Japan actually is doing much better in the whole economy very interesting.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
and harder still to distinguish from normal personality changes from simply being in these environments
Is there even a difference? A new behaviour is established, gets positive reinforcement, grows.
It's enough of an issue that there's a lot of psychological screening that goes on for serious undercover investigation roles.
Yes, few people have the ability to keep their inner life unchanged when they get a lot of reinforcement in a different direction. And describing it like that, I think its easy to see how having that ability would put you at risk for a different kind of insanity.
MineCraft Quilt multiplicity people
Google is useless here, mind elaborating?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
The western world isn't homogeneously wealthy though.
Most of it is within a factor of 2, which corresponds to about 30 years of economic development - and the bigger ones grow slower.
And Japan is at a minimum proof that you can have a functional and affordable housing market even with extreme land constraints and a high population density if you just allow more construction.
My beef is with the claim that this is keeping the whole economy down.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
people do seem to behave differently based on their avatar
As I understand it, this would be in effect only while you wear the avatar. I interpreted the sentence I responded to
Outside of the more out-there therians and actors, though, this can be hard to notice from the outside, and harder still to distinguish from normal personality changes from simply being in these environments.
as being about long-term effects. The short-term effects are interesting, but I dont see how they would lead to the character taking over in the off-time.
Closer to the central claim, though, I think there is some difference between, for example, playing a character that is foo and doing foo, for wide varieties of characteristics. The latter probably is better at encouraging that specific action! But the former makes you think about the broader characteristics and motivations and how all those things would interact. Which, to be fair, is still a new behavior that's established and getting reinforcement. Just a different one.
I somewhat agree, depending on what you imagine for "just doing foo". If you get told what to do over earbuds, thats less dangerous than "playing a character" normally. I would say this is because in the latter case youre figuring out what to do, and that way of figuring out can be reinforced. I dont think its essential for that figuring out to involve thinking about some character.
And I think this is essentially the same way normal behaviour changes in an environment: You go in with somewhat different mood/disposition each day, and some of them get more positive reinforcement than others.
BTW, I think often doing a specific action is not the best way of encouraging it. Many actions lie at a point within the decision tree that youd never normally get to, and training that last step more wont help.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
There's been some research to check for transfer to offline environments
Well yes, if we believe in reinforcement or some other mechanism like that, that can carry the short-term consequences into the long term. But there the proteus effect is not an alternative way that the character can take over long term. All the stuff about the mechanism of it suggests it doesnt have an independent long-term effect.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
I remember sitting in elementary school reading classes, where kids would be randomly picked to read some passage out of a book, and it was painfully obvious which of my fellow students could only read by sounding out syllables based on the spelling of words; they had absolutely no idea what the semantic content of what they just read actually was.
That propably means they (were made to) go too fast. If you can sound out the text, and you can understand speech, then you can understand the text. If you try to go very fast and throw every letter out of working memory as soon as you read it, thats bad. The teacher should make you repeat each word after you finish it, without looking back at the text, and same for sentences. Eventually youll learn to read fluidly just from practice - but better to read non-fluidly before that.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
there’s an occasional conspiracy theory in homeschooling circles that whole word learning is intended to teach children that meaning is completely arbitrary and thus communism or gender ideology or whatever.
Im sure it wasnt designed explictly with that goal, but theres more reason to this belief than just "cause it sux". How do you think people got the idea for whole word learning, if it doesnt work? Theres various ideas floating around about explicit knowledge not being so important, things being more fluid and contextual, "patchwork" methods over systems, etc. Those propably contributed to the idea. You could attribute them to constructivism, or pragmatism, or poststructuralism, but all of that falls under "fake and gay".
See also a comment further below.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
This is going to sound mean but one of the reasons I've largely stopped participating in conversations about sex, gender, relationships, etc... is that so many of the surrounding it is so, for lack of a better term, "autistic".
Some of this propably is a lack of social understanding from the people involved, but I think a good bit also comes from arguing in a formalistic way. Where, instead of "being reasonable", and using your common sense to grease the understanding, they try to be very literal about everything. Theyre doing this on purpose, not because they dont have common sense, but because, to stick with the metaphor, greasing well might let you get work done even with a mistake in the gears that you dont notice.
Potentially finding that mistake is prioritised because you dont particularly care about getting to the "practical" outcome. Theres propably many cases of red- and blue-pillers arguing with each other who handle their real-life relationship very similarly. The goal is to understand "what things really are", in some sense. To nerdy liberals, whether men or women are "really" treated unfairly in relationships is such an abstract question, not necessarily related to practical recommendations for anyone, but very important morally. And I think its clear why such a "reality" could be interesting on the trans topic.
This isnt intended to convince you such arguments are a good use of time, they propably mostly arent, but you might appreciate knowing it.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
So the fact that it was actually just a combination of some math from the 1940s and ever more powerful general compute, and that so many roadblocks (“how will it actually understand/do X”) turned out not to be problems at all (and indeed required zero human engagement whatsoever because they were ultimately the same generic pattern matching as everything else) rankles them. That this is all that we are.
This is nothing new though. If AI is possible at all, you were always going to get it from a dovetailer. Sure, it takes a lot more compute than current approaches, but those also take a lot more compute than humans.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
IMO this is just people not believing AGI is possible, or only believing it in the sense the physicalism requires them to say so.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
The philosophy may still be sound, we don't judge the art by the artist
An important part of the philosophy here is the claim that you can improve rationality in a domain-general way. That you could learn to avoid e.g. motivated reasoning in a way that would work on all topics simultanuously, so that your preformance in even the weakest field that a critic might adversarially pick will be ok (and that he has done this, obviously). Claiming to have a metabolic defect that would be lethal in the ancestral environment is strong evidence against that.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Living out one's ideals is a costly signal of sincerity, and achieving success and happiness by doing so is the least refutable argument. This is a big reason why religion is so persistent despite sounding batshit crazy from the outside — and I say this as a religious person.
Is it? AFAIK religion is negatively correlated with most measures of success before you correct for income and education and such. Now, it might be that those corrections are necessary to find the true causal effect, but its clearly not just "follow what the successful people are doing" any more.
In fact I think this works against religion. Far more people avoid religion because its associated with low-status people then would ever care about whats objectively reasonable.
Every people has a need for self-justification: "why do we rule this land and not you?"
"Because we started a city in a swamp with a bunch of bandits, and then raided our neighbors for wifes." - this is not quite "because we won", but it sure is getting there. Also this is coming from the greatest state of ancient europe that everyone else is legitimating themselves from.
EDIT: Actually, this is another thing that goes against the theory: All the europeans who claimed a right deriving from the roman conquerers, as opposed to "We lived here so long" - most of them until the age of nationalism, and a few persisting.
The spartans did not write much, so we cant be sure what they thought, but I think they had a similar mentality. Certainly the part where they officially remained at war with the helots would suggest it.
I dont know where I got this from, but: "Straussian reading is pretending everyone smart has always been a liberal".
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Isnt it weird how you never hear about the gypsies? They sure look like they count as a capital-M Minority: Very poor, very uneducated, very bad relations to the police, they even were in the Nazi camps. But in political discourse they might as well not exist. Im vaguely aware that our eastern neighbors have more of them and its more of a topic there, but this doesnt make it to me either. I just searched for it and best I found is this, from 2020. Theres sightly more in german, but compared to the media volume dedicated to telling me that Orban is mean to the gays, it might as well not exist. While I was at it I also looked for the "list of gypsies that made important contributions to science", and that actually doesnt exist. The only thing that remotely looks like a hit is this, which has three people on it: one with a possible nth-generation ancestor, and two that google isnt even sure exist.
I find this interesting as a point of comparison. Theres lots of people out there of even opposing ideologies giving mechanistic explanations of how the shared characteristics of Minorities lead to the political discourse around them, and then heres a case where it just didnt.
Yes, but its a thing far-lefties write about and thats kind of it. Can you remember a polititian being accused of Antiziganismus by a relevant opponent or a major newspaper? Now compare antisemitism, racism vs MENA.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
I don't think "shared characteristics of Minorities" dominate the discussion outside of ethnonationalist or HBD circles.
I think many progressives would say that blacks and hispanics being poor, uneducated, and having bad relations with the police causes the kind of politics they have in the US, and potentially extend this schema to other groups.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
This is very much in accordance with how average German, British or Hungarian liberal will be obsessed with black people but ignore or even just dislike the (sometimes much larger) Turkish Arab or Albanian populations in their midst.
The turks do have a kind of minority politics. Its a lot less intense than the US with blacks, but they have their highly credentialed representatives that get a good bit of stage time and diversity-grants, and theyre a topic in political discussion. The mindset you describe exists and is something you might filter into as a visitor from anglostan, but its pretty niche. So I dont think the atlantic fully explains the situation with the gypsies.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
Sorry if this wasnt clear, Im austrian. But I think its somewhat surprising you dont hear about them in america as well. You certainly heard about the "syrian" refugees, and I would guess youre at least aware that the turks are a topic here?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
What do you actually hope to get from a right that embraces white identity? I understand that DR often think mainstream conservatives just dont take anti-white progressives seriously enough, but if e.g. Rufo just maximally succeded, what do you think would be missing?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
My point is just, people think the bundle leads to a certain kind of politics, and heres an example where it very much didnt.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
It's simple- look at the political and cultural power other ethnic groups enjoy by organizing along ethnic lines and fiercely advocating for their group.
I think in the modern context this success is almost entirely down to the authorities humoring them. US blacks are not such a threat that the government has to make all these concessions to them, they could absolutely turn it off if they wanted to. China does that sort of thing all the time. The "concessions" are things the elites already wanted to do. I mean, a lot of those organisations doing the "fierce advocacy" arent even run by black people. Their ethnic power is a kayfabe for progressives.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
When the ADL puts enormous pressure at the highest levels of power to "Stop Hate", is that progressivism masquerading as ethnic power, or is it ethnic power masquerading as progressive morality?
But I think you will agree that the ADL didnt get its power from "fierce advocacy". The advocacy and the being-persuaded-by-it are fake. My point is that "doing identity politics" suggests a pretty specific plan of action: You want to be very loud about how your group is treated badly, maybe have an organisation dedicated to that, make an ethnic voting block, etc. But those parts are kayfabe, they dont actually make you win. Now, maybe you mean something else by it, but if so its pretty prone to misunderstandings, because I still cant tell what it would be after rereading your comments with the assumption that its there.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1yr ago
The model of the second kind was indeed a big part of what I had in mind. I wasnt aware of the changes. Around when would you say this happened, and how are the supporting organisations that dont have to take a position doing? I would love some more details; so far this sounds to me more like an accidental hiccough than the model not fitting at all.
I think poor people care much more about separating themselves from even poorer people then about getting to be with the richer people. Horrible-to-be-around-ness also follows the power law.
More options
Context Copy link